Rice Stays the Course

Condi Rice has done a lot of globetrotting (and, no doubt, shoe shopping) having visited some 75 countries since she became America's top diplomat - the secretary of state. Despite all of that, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a list of what she has actually accomplished on behalf of her country - which is still despised by much of the world.

So, when Rice makes pronouncements like this - in the style of 'old America' (pre the 2006 elections) - you have to admit that her best before date expired a long ago.

Rice defended President George W. Bush's push to bring democracy to the Middle East -- an idea conspicuously absent from the panel's recommendations -- saying it would remain a "centerpiece" of U.S. foreign policy.

It wasn't mentioned in the ISG's report because it's patently absurd and has proven to be a non-starter. You cannot impose democracy on an entire region no matter how many people you kill. It's a washed-up neocon idea whose time has passed yet she still stands by her husband's president's delusions that it can actually be accomplished.

While saying she saw "an opening" for progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, Rice did not endorse the panel's call for new diplomatic push for a "comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace."

The so-called US road map has been gathering dust in the glove compartment for far too long and when someone comes along to offer Rice directions, she prefers to just ignore them while she sits in the driver's seat looking absolutely stunned and determined to just stay exactly where she is regardless of the fact she's just getting nowhere.

Rice has to be one of the most useless secretaries of state the US has ever had. Bush will definitely keep her on and she's shown no sign of leaving his team even though she's going to have one tough row to hoe once Gates takes over the defence department.

While Gates is considered far less combative and contrarian than Rumsfeld, he has a history of clashing with secretaries of state, most notably George Shultz, who, during the Reagan administration, objected to Gates' hawkish views of the Soviet Union and once tried to have him fired.
[...]
"He is open to evidence and less likely to be driven by fads, or the ideological certainties that sped this administration off course," Nye said.

Gates' "frame of reference is more where Condoleezza Rice used to be, before the administration's excursion into democracy promotion."

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And since she's jumped on that bandwagon and is determined to stay that course, there are sure to be some very uncomfortable and non-productive clashes between the two people who are supposed to implement the so-called 'new way forward' in the Middle East.

At the very least, she's bound to get some more shoe shopping done in the next two years.